I can feel my talons sink into the earth; behind me, the aether flows as a molten lunar ocean. It surges across the cracked flagstones, and to my second-sight, they glitter like emeralds in the fiery spume. This place is the rot of Eden; its air is golden wine. I breathe deep.

Hail the ever-changing Serpent! Hail the bloodied Lion! The warp is my endlessly descending oubliette. Its impermanence makes all my efforts meaningless. But here, amongst this plague of mortals, I am infused with vigor.Across the drift of crooked alleys, slumping rooftops and shadowed hovels, I behold in my second-sight the golden halo blazing about the head of the Enemy. It is so brilliant that it causes me pain. Even the foolish mortal beings mewling beneath me must be able to perceive it at some level.Sigmar. The hand of the Enemy at work. I owe my long banishment to him. I spread my wings and ready my blade. Magnus. His puppet. Such wrath I shall visit upon him that the very firmament will shake with terror.I can feel the dream-nexus swirl about me; I perceive its raging, reality-shattering breath as a hurricane of gemstone fire. Here, at this juncture, fate is unravelling. Now is our chance to change things. To make everything right.So let it be written; so let it be done.

The old man shook his head. His ice-white hair flailed about wildly. Last night, he had stayed awake until the small hours desperately trying to recall the name of his wife and daughter. He had lost. Come the morn, his own name had vanished with the dismal starlight. Every night, he lost that battle. For years now, everyone simply called him "The Professor." Why? He wasn't sure. During his rare periods of lucidity, he recalled embarking upon a Grand Experiment long ago. Just what its purpose or goal was, he wasn't sure.

He adjusted his goggles. The war for his sanity was hopeless; he lost another battle each night. He cackled. Did he even have a wife and daughter? Did he ever? Or were the two women just images in painting? Or perhaps statues in a graveyard? No matter. Defeating insanity was not something he was interested in anymore. The voice inside his skull hissed louder, demanding murder, death. Two men charged up the cracked stairway towards him.

His sword leaped into his hand. His age belied a powerful strength and speed. He drove his sword into the chest of the first man, he fell with a gurgle. But try as he might, the Professor could not yank it free of the corpse's rib cage. Blood spattered on the ground, pooling into arcane formulae. "More data for the Experiment!" he shrieked.

There came the hiss of a taper followed by a crack and a loud boom as the second man fired his pistol. The Professor felt the ball whizz past his ear, taking a clump of his hair with it. The voice in his soul screeched, demanding vengeance. The Professor felt warp energy surge through him. He cast his sword aside. With a roar that shook the cobblestones, the Professor flung himself bodily upon the second man.

Moments later, the Professor stood tall and red, covered in entrails and shattered bone. Aloft he held the man's head. More of the Empire's mislead soldiers charged at him. The Professor flung the severed head at the closest. The voice echoed his laughter. It made promises of incredible power; of the completion of the Professor's Grand Experiment. The Professor cackled.

Whenever he fought for his sanity, he lost; whenever he fought for his life, he won. A most equitable trade.

With a hatred born of righteous fury, Magnus the Pious stared down upon the nightmare expanse of sagging hovels, crooked towers, fuming miasma and shattered streets - the wretched place fools called The City of the Damned. Mordheim.

The blood of Asavar Kul - the so-called Everchosen - still befouled Magnus' hammer. He had chosen not to clean it - that its dreary state might remind him always of the threat of Chaos - lurking just beneath the surface of all reality; and, perhaps, all dreams.

Mordheim. A boil once lanced by Sigmar's righteous comet, now become a festering wound - worse, and more poisonous than ever before. Magnus steeled his heart. He would cauterize the rotten flesh with holy fire. A final task to accomplish before uniting the Empire once and for all.

He raised his hammer. The army at his back screamed their war cry. "It is their gods that failed them!" Magnus called, "Our God is always with us!"

He took a step forward onto the deformed cobblestone. For a moment, something checked him. As though the patch laid bare before him was not the one expected, but a darker road - as though something beheld in a dream. Magnus shook it off. Sigmar was with him. The squirming, loathsome denizens of the city were as nothing compared to the Chaos warriors he had defeated in the Great War. One last step on the path - one last step before a united Empire would bring, at last, peace to the Old World.

Magnus descended upon Mordheim as a fiery comet, his army surging behind. He beheld the slinking shadows of the city beginning to congeal. A foulness coalesced to oppose him in a Great Rebellion against sanity, against the light.